


all the words are gonna bleed from me

by doctorenterprise



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gunshot Wounds, Hand to Hand Combat, Hostage Situations, Hydra (Marvel), Kidnapping, Knife fights, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Protective Steve Rogers, Restraints, Set in Some Imagined Future, Seven Nation Army Makes Me Feel Steve-related Things, Steve Is A Machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:51:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorenterprise/pseuds/doctorenterprise
Summary: It’s been a long time since Steve felt such an unwavering, steady rage.-A brief, dark look into Steve's devotion to James Buchanan Barnes.





	all the words are gonna bleed from me

Steve stands at the very edge of the roof of Stark’s new tower, tall and sleek against the Mahattan skyline, and sets his jaw as he surveys the city. The wind is sharp and bitterly cold as it whips around him, but he doesn’t shiver. It’s quiet on the roof – it’s February and no one dares venture after him. The weather isn’t the coldest thing on the rooftop today.

He’s been waiting. Too long. His blood is pumping and his arms are crossed over his chest to stop himself lashing out at the first hard surface he finds.

It’s been a long time since he felt such an unwavering, steady rage. He know the team is walking on eggshells around him – tiptoeing around questions and avoiding him as best they can while they work. 

Bucky has been in Hydra’s captivity for eighty-seven hours and eleven minutes. 

Steve is done waiting. Bucky is out there, somewhere, in the city and Steve has been unsuccessful in locating him for eighty-seven hours. He watches each rooftop before him with straight shoulders and a steely gaze.

“Cap.” 

He doesn’t turn around. He knows Tony wouldn’t be on the roof without news.

“We found him.”

The city seems to quake before him as his mouth twists in a sick smile. 

Good, he thinks. God help anyone who stands in his way.

_

Two hours and six minutes later, Steve is storming through a dark hallway too quickly for his team to keep pace. He has one objective and covering his back is not it. He is only interested in moving forward. 

Besides, he thinks. No one he comes across remains a threat for long.

“Steve,” Natasha bites out. “Slow down. You’re not helping anyone if you get shot in the fucking head. We do this as a team.”

He ignores her, and pushes on.

The base it mostly empty, anyways, save a few henchmen who barely get their guns parallel with the ground before their necks snap under Steve’s hands. It’s a cakewalk – and his team is only slowing him down.

He picks up his pace.

-

Forty minutes later, he’s cleared another two floors and left four bodies in his wake - two scientists, a guard, and a mercenary who had begged for his life in Russian. Steve did not abide.

He still hasn’t found Bucky.

He pushes on.

-

An hour later, he comes across a work station with six monitors, all showing footage of Bucky. They are recordings, he deduces. Some look old – very old; some are clearly recent, Steve’s army serial number tattooed visibly on Bucky’s ribs. He touches his own ribs where the number 32557038 is tattooed in blank ink and his heart throbs painfully.

The oldest recording shows Bucky strapped into that godforsaken chair, eyes wide with terror as he struggles against his bonds. It’s from the ‘50s, based on the technology and the grainy photo of Eisenhower handing in the background. He looks young – younger than he had as he clapped Steve on the back in Brooklyn his last night in New York all those years ago. Young with fear. 

Steve looks away.

The newest footage shows Bucky in clothes Steve recognizes from his closet and it sparks a small flicker of hope in his deadened chest.

He keeps moving forward.

-

Nine minutes later, a Strike team that has clearly been warned of his approach ambushes him as he turns a corner blindly.

He loses his handgun immediately to one man who uses his surprise effectively. He is not so ill-prepared when they try to get mag cuffs around his wrists – mag cuffs lost their edge on him six years ago when another team not dissimilar to this stuck him to the wall of an elevator. 

It’s funny, he thinks as he clenches his teeth through the pain of a switchblade lodging itself in his thigh. They always think they can overpower him with numbers.

Two more men swing a garrotte around his neck in a split second. His air is cut off swiftly, but no wire is going to put him down – he breaks both their fists in his own and the garrotte drops to the ground, useless without anyone to wring it tighter.

He doesn’t think they’ll learn.

A woman aims her foot at his head and he catches her calf in his palm easily, twisting her leg until he hears the ligaments in her knee snap. He drops her leg as she screams.

The last three members of the team come at him as a united front, knives in hand. He takes one to the shoulder and it throws him a little – enough that a man with three inches and sixty pounds on him has the opportunity to plant a set of brass knuckles in his left cheekbone. He ends the fight with a bullet between each of their eyes and shakes it off.

The only way he’s leaving here without Bucky is in a body bag.

-

It’s another half hour before he comes across more agents.

He crosses a window foolishly, not thinking about neighbouring buildings as he makes a dive for an agent levelling a glock at his head. He grunts and rolls as he hits the ground, a rifle bullet lodging itself under his ribs.

He curses. Rolls onto his back.

He’s bleeding heavily from two knife wounds and a shot that would have killed a regular man. His breathing feels more like a struggle than it did in 1935.

The bullet must have nicked a lung. He heaves himself to his feet after crawling from the windowed room and shakes his head. 

Bucky is still waiting for him.

-

In the end, it he finds Bucky in a cold, windowless room in the basement. He’s not restrained save a dangerous looking shock collar around his neck, sensors clearly marked on the door.

Bucky’s pale, sweaty face makes him look sickly in the florescent light of the room. 

Steve takes a moment in the doorway to collect his thoughts. It doesn’t take long – soon, he’s striding purposefully toward where Bucky is seated widespread on a doctor’s exam table. 

He grips the collar in both hands and tears it apart. Bucky doesn’t flinch.

“You came.”

Steve’s jaw clenches as he swallows.

“I would bring down regimes for you, James Barnes.”

Standing between Bucky’s thighs, he grips Bucky’s head and crashes their lips together in the fiercest kiss they’ve ever shared. He smudges blood on Bucky’s cheeks, but neither of them mind in the slightest.

-

Twenty minutes later, they sit on the roof of the Hydra compound and share a cigarette in silence.

Steve feels it in his bones that Bucky will always be home for him.

He conveys this with a palm at the nape of Bucky’s neck and, as they look each other in the eye, he knows the feeling is returned.

It’s unspoken, but it’ll do.


End file.
